A Race Through Dark Places
by ncfan
Summary: A candle in dark places, bringing light to our divisions. Onesided Ishida x Orihime.


**Characters**: Orihime, Ishida, mentions of others**  
Summary**: A candle in dark places, bringing light to our divisions. Onesided Ishida x Orihime.**  
Pairings**: Onesided Ishida x Orihime**  
Warnings/Spoilers**: Spoilers for the fact that Ulquiorra is dead.**  
Timeline**: Post Hueco Mundo arc**  
Author's Note**: They do make quite a pair, don't they? Feedback would be appreciated.**  
Disclaimer**: I don't own Bleach.

* * *

When Orihime thinks of green, she sees death, where before she had seen life. Spring, new growth, the return of flowers. Now turned to winter, with bleached grasses and trees stripped naked, of all their leaves and glories. The words run through her mind, musing without mercy, cold and congealing on the soft, squishy surface of her brain.

"You'd think they were trying to kill each other out there," Ishida comments mildly, staring at the elementary schoolers at their snowball fight, as Orihime sits on the bench, silent, doing her homework. Ishida's expression sours considerably when a rogue snowball comes out of nowhere and hits him between the shoulders. "Lousy kids," he grumbles, brushing the snow off of his coat, and Orihime bites her lip to hide a smile that only comes in half.

The snow has come unseasonably early that year, has just fallen that morning; the elementary school students out in the field are, of course, elated, and Orihime herself is happy to see the snows return, but Ishida seems to be suffering some sort of souring-sickening with the snow, viewing it with eyes that are anything but joyful. Orihime wonders, but doesn't ask, isn't quite anxious enough to needle the question home. –_Why do you despise the winter so?_

Her mind isn't on her work. Her mind is far away, feeling sand against her face and wind whipping into her loose hair. Her mind saw sees, and moon, and stars.

Her mind sees green, cold as winter, vivid as death.

.

"The last time I checked, Inoue-san, four could _not_ be divided by zero." Ishida, peering curiously onto the paper on which Orihime scribbles, points out the error she has made, frowning slightly and tilting his head to the side.

Scarlet color rushes into her cheeks, as Orihime looks down and grimaces at her math homework. _And done in pen; of course_, she thinks in frustration. She slams the pen down upon the book she's been bearing down on, and holds her hands up in the air helplessly, brow furrowing. "Math _is_ my weakest subject." Her joke falls on deaf ears, due to the unfortunate circumstances that makes Ishida all but tone-deaf to situational humor when it's coming out of a mouth not his own.

The look Ishida gives her bespeaks bewilderment, confusion, and what Orihime wants to see least—growing suspicion. "Inoue-san… You always make good grades in _every_ class, including math."

Orihime manages to muster up the emotion to glare at him, before she balls up her paper and starts over.

.

Ishida is blowing on his hands to try to warm them, his long fingers and the bridge of his nose chapped with cold. A strange whistle penetrates through the cracks in his fingers. The shade of pale gray in the sky has darkened, ever so slightly, and Orihime thinks—incessantly—of emerald green.

She is staring down at the paper braced on her math book. It is blank and Orihime stares down, brow wrinkled deeply, as if she expects the paper to start to smoke, catch fire, and curl up black at the edges, crinkling delicately, any second now. She is wondering, very hard, if she shouldn't just put off doing her homework until she goes home. It's a tempting prospect to the hands that bear no eagerness to hold a pen.

_Maybe I should go home soon. _Looking at Ishida, who's still standing on the sidewalk, blowing on his hands and casting a wary eye at the fifty-man snowball fight going on nearby, Orihime decides against it. _Maybe not. _Truth be told, she doesn't particularly want to leave him alone. Orihime can't be sure, but she's fairly certain that Ishida starts brooding if he's left alone too long.

There is a blot of green on the cover of her math book, a splash of color that the illustrators have seen fit to paint on. When her eyes are drawn there, Orihime's heart skips a beat, painful and dissonant, and as fast as she can without tearing the paper, she draws it so it hides the splash of green on the front cover of her math book.

Orihime's breathing only stills when she can no longer see any green, no green except for the spots behind her eyes.

.

He's noticed. Of course he's noticed. Ishida's life in the past has depended upon observing closely what's going on around him, both on and off the battlefield—though, Orihime knows, that he views every aspect of his life as a battlefield of sorts. He's constantly on his guard, and Orihime wishes to high heaven that he wasn't.

Now, he's peering, concern so painfully obvious on his face that Orihime can, momentarily, forget her irritation with him, peering down at the barren, empty piece of lined paper smoothed flat under the pressure of Orihime's taut fingers, pristine and utterly unmarked. "Inoue-san…"

—_Please don't say anything. Please-please-please just let it lie._

"…You're normally done by now." Not a hint of reproach in his voice, just tentative worry. For all his notorious bluntness, Ishida does show a great deal of hesitation when it comes to stepping on people's toes in situations like this.

Orihime forces her teeth to show in a smile. "I guess I just don't really want to do my homework tonight."

That's not it, and he knows it, plain as day in the look on his face. The red chapped on his cheeks pales slightly, as he licks lips dried out by the bite of winter.

Words forming on the tip of his tongue, and Orihime can practically see them jarring out into the charged, frigid air. Sad and low, hitting notes that neither want to hear.

_Don't do this._

At least, that's what he would have said, but doesn't, and Orihime can't help but feel a spark of resentment, that Ishida doesn't say what he should be saying.

.

"Is it Ulquiorra?"

Between two sessions of blowing on his hands, this is what Ishida asks, feigning indifference. The fact that he feels the need to feign shows that he is anything but uninterested.

Orihime's blood goes cold.

.

"I…" It's all Orihime can do to keep her head from spinning right out of control, as she forces herself to make eye contact with Ishida, who remains unbearably composed. "I…" She grabs the reins of her voice. "I don't know what you're talking about."

For a moment, Ishida says nothing, utters not a single word. Then, with the sounds of the kids playing lingering on in the background, his voice is slightly choked. "Inoue-san, I don't know what you're expecting me to do, but—"

"I really don't know what you're talking about." Orihime chooses to reiterate the point, voice slow, low and deliberate, willing him to believe it, almost trying to make herself believe it too.

He closes his eyes tight, makes himself look much older than he actually is, before answering. "Inoue-san, if you will recall, I was still conscious when Ulquiorra…passed," Ishida finishes lamely.

Orihime just looks at him, throat closing shut and sickening so that she can't speak. The clouds darken, and she finds herself willing it to rain so she won't have to finish this conversation.

Ishida's eyes have narrowed, opaque and, at the same time, strangely haunted. "I don't think," he murmurs, "that anyone you have ever given your sympathy to truly deserved it."

It would be interesting, Orihime decides, to know whether or not Ishida counted himself among that number. Then she realizes, given Ishida's slightly masochistic tendencies, that she would probably be better off not knowing.

She shakes her head intensely, brushing hair out of her eyes. "That's not it… That's not it at all." Despite herself, Orihime can't keep the cracks, grim and pale and choking, out of her voice.

Ishida doesn't understand. He really doesn't. It's clear he's trying, for her sake, but he just doesn't seem to comprehend what's going on in Orihime's head. Ishida, for whom the world is a bleak place. Ishida, who always assumes the worst and seems to have gone that route now.

Now possessed of the urge to air her old secrets, if only to convince Ishida that it's not at all what he thinks it was, Orihime forms the words with a voice like dust being blown off in an old attic, hazy sunlight filtering in through the windows in slanted shafts of gold. "It's not sympathy. Well, not entirely. While I would have rather seen Ulquiorra-san die than you or Kurosaki-kun, it just didn't… _feel right_, to watch him die that way."

"You couldn't have saved him." Ishida voices the obvious, again mouthing the lame attempts at comfort that he is utterly ill-equipped to give. He is dreadfully quiet. "In order to help someone, they have to _want_ to be helped first."

Which is why, they both know as they look at each other, that no one has ever been able to help Ishida himself, not even Orihime. Ishida doesn't even want to acknowledge what makes him bleed.

"I know that," Orihime admits finally, after long, heart-stopping moments to gather the words. Eyes wide open against the cold, she realizes that she actually means it. "And… it doesn't change anything."

.

In the frigid cold, Ishida grabs the fingers of one of Orihime's hands, impulsive, a rare act for him. His pale, slightly blue fingers are warm and moist from blowing on them so vigorously before. Any attempts at indifference on his part have long since fallen away completely, shattering like brittle glass in the cold.

"Inoue-san…" For someone who usually so carefully measures his words, it's plain that spontaneous speech is difficult for him. Ishida flounders, eyes dark and strangely bruised, before he works up the courage to keep talking. "I… do know what it's like."

"What what's like?" Orihime finds herself daring, hope against hope, that someone gets it.

"To have your loyalties split down the middle."

When Orihime says nothing, staring up at him and letting the wind speak between them, Ishida licks his lips dry and whispers, barely meeting her gaze, "As a child, my father, and my grandfather."

Attempting to comfort her, Ishida's given away more than he would have liked to. Orihime realizes this in the moment the bright red color in his cheeks, buffeted by the bitter wind, vanishes entirely, disappearing beneath translucent, blue-veined skin. For a moment, she can see, with painful clarity, the timid, sensitive child who had been trapped between the desire for his father's approval and his grandfather's love.

This explains a lot.

About both of them.

Orihime's lips curl up in the irony of a smile. "The division between practicality and our humanity," she whispers, knows that he can hear her by the pained, painful tightening of his jaw. "It's the worst division we'll ever know."


End file.
